Firefox for iPad?

When the iPad was first introduced, it was touted as being a great way to receive content. Whether this was from a news source, educational app, game or just from the plain old internet. The iPad has since developed into something both for content consumption and content creation. Yet the main thrust of the iPad is still there: plopping on the couch and surfing the web.

So with a device who’s main goal is browsing online, one’s web browser is a key to the overall experience. While Safari certainly remains a viable option, there have been others to join the marketplace of iPad browser apps (Atomic, Dolphin, Opera mini and Mercury just to name a few).

One glaring omission in the mobile iOS browser space has been Mozilla. To date, their only submission into the iOS app store has been an iPhone tab syncing app. Yet they’ve had Firefox for Android for quite awhile now.

Earlier this week, Mozilla gave a presentation by its Project Design Team that looks like they have a few things coming down the pipe for iOS users.

“We wanted to make something entirely new. We wanted to look into how we could reinvent the browser for a new form factor.”

Mozilla believes that browsing on the internet on the iPad can be greatly improved, and they look to do so with their “Junior” iPad web browser. Mozilla’s goal in all of this? “We wanted to make something entirely new. We wanted to look into how we could reinvent the browser for a new form factor.” Looking at some of the features, it appears Junior will accomplish just this.

There are a lot of features still under development, and there seems to be some decisions still to be made by Mozilla on what it will include. However, some features of interest are a focus on full screen browsing, no tabs, user profiles and a unified address and search bar.

It’ll still be awhile before we see Junior ship, but the more competition and useful features designed, the better it is for the overall consumer. Google also is rumored to be bringing their Chrome browser to iOS as well, something we’ll be keeping an eye out for.

But while you patiently wait, feel free to check out Mozilla’s demo on Junior.

What browser do you use on your iPad? Do you think you would use Mozilla’s Junior?

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Brett Barner

Brett Barner likes Apple in both technology and fruit forms. The former he uses as fancy calculators from the future to connect to the internets; where he then writes about his experiences here. The later he uses for pies. Additional writings can be found on his personal blog, bybrettbarner.com, and Twitter @brettbarner.

One response to Firefox for iPad?

I’m not a real big fan of Safari on iPad or Mac and typically use Chrome or Firefox on the desktop. When I’m on the iPad I typically consume content via an app like Reeder, Tweetbot, etc. However, I’ll be very interested to see what Mozilla does w/ Junior. Will definitely be checking it out.